The seven things no one tells you about those first months post-pregnancy.

Let’s get straight down to business. I would love to give you an intro paragraph and talk about a funny experience I had with the little one but… Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat. Little Mister Screamo is ACTUALLY asleep in the daytime (Hallelujah, praise the Lord!) and I want to write this piece before he wakes up and screams for titties like it’s the apocalypse.

Nips the size of a planet

One fine day, either during or post pregnancy you will walk into the bathroom to take a shower and check yourself out in the mirror only to realise that your once voluptuous, succulent, lovely pink-tinged little nips have morphed into gargantuan target-like objects.

That titillating pink tinge? Gone. I can only dare to call this new transformation “dark matter”.

I know this has been expressed a gazillion times and it’s cliché, but it really needs to be articulated for that one extra millionth time. This isn’t that time you were too lazy to study for your exams and stayed up cramming for three nights, or that time you attended a three day music festival and were coming down from a cocktail of drugs.

That shit ain’t shit.

The sleep deprivation you are forced to endure with a baby is like cramming for exams with no sleep whilst simultaneously attending a music festival 365 days of the year and then going on a high and coming down again NON-STOP FOREVER. Well, at least it seems like forever.

If you have a bub that sleeps through the night… Well, bless your little heart.

Listen: Rebecca Judd and Monique Bowley speak to mums and experts about tackling the first three days with a newborn baby. Post continues after audio.

So if you don’t have a baby, don’t talk to me about how tired you are because your neighbour’s dog woke you up at 8am. I will slap you.

Pregnancy and post-pregnancy hormones are not to be messed with. They’re a whole new ball game and have made me feel womanly emotions I have never felt before, like, crying when King Joffrey died because you know, as much of a bad guy as he was, he was still someone’s son and that just sad. So sad.

Those hormones will also cause you to cry over spilled milk, cry because the sunset is just so beautiful, cry because you saw a picture of someone crying, and cry because you realised that you just ran out of salted caramel ice cream.

Hormones please, just get your shit together.

Get used to having your coffee cold

Save yourself from creating a strict diet regime post-pregnancy. You don’t need the gym either because your pregnancy weight will drop before you know it. Fast.

It’s cool, I mean pfft.. who likes their coffee hot anyway? It’s kind of like having iced coffee, only at room temperature.

Episio- you’re going to snip my what?

I’m sorry, doc, I know I’m feeling pretty woozy from trying to push a baby the size of a pony out of my genitals and that gas I’ve been inhaling is just making me high off my face… But just to clarify, did you just say you’re going to literally tear me a new one?

Seriously, I think doctors just use fancy medical terms to sugarcoat the fact that they’re about to butcher your body. Like, “Oh, we’re just going to be performing an episiotomy, not to worry, just a tiny little incision.” Yeah well, that is until you get home and find out that you now have a vagina that connects to your bumhole.

Enjoy your lush pregnancy hair

Because it’s going to shed like crazy a few months post-baby.

You will hardly lose any hair for nine months because, well, hormones. Now imagine nine months worth of hair deciding to all fall out at once. It’s like a scene out of a Japanese horror movie.

You will be that overprotective and paranoid Mum you said you will never be

Whether you like it or not. I always told myself that I would be the most chill Mum; cool, calm and collected, you know what I’m saying?

Well, now I’m all like, “Holy moly, he’s choking on water! Call the ambulance!” Or “He just coughed.. OMG call the doc he must have whooping cough!” Or when he lightly bumps his head on something I downright think he’s about to go into a coma. Every single time.

Again hormones, just get your shit together. God damn.

Engorgement – No, that’s not the name of a dam

In fact, that’s the name of your boobs a couple of days after you have given birth and they are comparable to Mount Vesuvius erupting, spilling lava into an entire ancient township and turning everyone and everything into stone.

Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic. But that’s how I felt the day my milk came in and I woke up feeling like I just came home from a Spring Break Wet T-shirt contest. Only there was no partying and boozing involved (unfortunately), but instead, my screaming baby woke up to the smell of fresh milk and wanted all of it.

On the upside, my boobs grew by two sizes so that’s kind of cool.

Not to put anyone off having kids, but all the bad stuff aside, it’s actually the best rollercoaster ride I have been on in my life. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t learn something amazing and new, like, how the heck it was possible that bub got poo in his neck crevices AND hair?

This post originally appeared on Hangry By Nature and has been republished here with full permission. You can follow the Hangry by Nature Instagram here, and Facebook page here.

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